Quickfire Blog Post- Latika Gulati

Transdisciplinary Collectives/Labs/Companies:

Capital One – A bank that calls itself a technology company. Instead of focusing all of their energy on the banking and financial aspect of the company, there has been a large push to grow the technology expertise. They even have “labs” which are a collection of designers, computer scientists, and bankers whose job is to rapidly generate new ideas.

Washington Post – This newspaper company does expend a lot of resources on their journalism, but has also began a push towards technology. One project in particular is using big data to tailor the display of the website to show relevant articles first. This project requires the use of journalists, data engineers, psychologists, and designers.

Facebook – This social media platform became so popular in part because of their understanding of human behaviors. To achieve such success, they needed to incorporate visual designers, software engineers, behavioral psychologists, and data engineers.

Transdisciplinary Projects:

Human Genome Project – A collection of computer scientists and geneticists teamed up to map the human genome through a series of sample collection and analysis. They were the first big push to discover and analyze the genome.

Watson – IBM created a platform that uses natural language processing to accomplish a goal. While it was flaunted by winning Jeopardy, a little known application of it is in the medical field. Watson can use data from hundreds of medical journals and learn how to solve medical mysteries with the help of medical professionals.

NeuroSky – An electroencephalogram that allows users to view their concentration levels. This can be paired with video games to improve concentration. People involved are neuroscientists, engineers, designers, and software developers